


Ghosts

by RellysTales



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Grieving, Self harm sort of, This hurt me to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:22:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29930619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RellysTales/pseuds/RellysTales
Summary: Fran struggles to cope with the fallout of her platonic soulmate's death. She learns what ghosts really are.
Relationships: Case Sports & Fran Beans, Case Sports and Fran Beans
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Ghosts

All through the Bucket, all day and all night, one sound could be heard: the hammering of metal against metal. Through every corner and every crevice, if one stopped for even a moment, they could hear the stillness and the silence broken by a sharp  _ klang _ . 

The forging of steel. 

Everyone who's anyone to the Mexico City Wild Wings could tell you the worst kept secret about their underground stadium: deep in the Bucket, down in the hot depths of the boiler room, there was an entire very illegal forge set up by a very legal woman. 

In kinder times, it was merely a hobby, a moment of distraction from the rush of playing a bloodsport. But since the twelfth season drew to its unceremonious close, it was the only place Fran Beans could stand to be. 

Lots of folks tell you how lonely it is, losing someone close. Fran expected this. In the hours after Case's death, she felt like she was ready for loneliness. When her rage burned white hot and her blood boiled, she could cope. 

But rage could not fuel you forever. 

What Fran never realized, though, was how real ghosts are. Not the kind that play video games and marry your coworkers, nor the ones waiting around the corners to spook you. It's the ghosts sitting in their chair by empty whiteboards and unfiled paperwork. The ones waiting in the back of your mind, watching Cell do something silly you'd love to share but knowing you never can. They're in the part of your brain that didn't bother remembering facts, figures and regulations because you always had someone to remind you if you forgot. They're in the parts of you you can't access anymore, because they were locked behind doors whose only keys had burned up with their owner. 

Ghosts were everywhere, around every corner. They just didn't want to spook you, they wanted to remind you. 

It was, ironically, the crowding of these ghosts that was the only thing that made Fran feel truly alone. It was the kind of suffocating, deafening quiet you can never get used to. 

So she filled the bucket with the sounds of her discontent. She drowned out the painful silence. From every square inch you could hear the ringing of her pain. The sound of hot iron on iron. 

And when she emerged from her forge, five days after anyone had last dared talk to her, they would hear a new sound wherever she went: the jingle of shackles, clanging together as she let a handcuff chain dangle from her right arm, with a simple leather briefcase on the end. 

Now she had solved it, she thought. No longer could the ghosts sneak up on her, now that she had them permanently bound to her wrist. She could never forget, so they could never remind her. 


End file.
